Broadband for America
“Mobile Broadband & Implications for Broadband Competition and Adoption”
William Lehr (MIT)

You can find a PDF copy of the paper in its entirety here.

Dr. William Lehr reviews mobile broadband infrastructure, business models, usage models, and coming technologies that will allow mobile Internet to be a competitive force.  Wireless broadband is perceived to significantly increase competition in the market place and drive new technologies and applications, especially as smart phones are expected to account for 35 percent of all handset sales by 2013.

Key conclusions in the report:

• Mobile services in the U.S. are currently “robustly competitive.”
• “The overall impact of mobile broadband will be strongly pro-competitive.”
• Mobile and fixed broadband services to remain “distinct and complementary services, rather than as close service substitutes in most user/usage contexts.”
• By “enabling the convergence of mobile communication services and the broadband internet, mobile broadband can enable the creation of markets for wholly new services (e.G., mobile health, location-aware multimedia, and machine-to-machine communications), as well as enhancing the value of existing broadband services by allowing them to go mobile.”
• “The rapid pace of progress in broadband-related investment in infrastructure, services, content, and applications; and innovation all along the value chain (from services to content to applications to end-user devices) should give us pause before we consider new regulatory obligations on broadband providers.”

You can find a PDF copy of the paper in its entirety here.